Just a little note because soon it will be March, Women's History Month, and grandmothers have been on my mind a lot lately.
Spike Lee won his oscar for best adaptation of a screenplay for BlackkKlansman. I didn't see this yet, but hopefully I will get to see it on amazon on netflix at some point. I do admire Spike Lee's work and I agree with him that he should have won something for "Do the Right Thing" which I consider to have been a movie masterpiece.
In a comments section I ran across while opening my e-mail, Spike Lee mentioned that his grandmother saved all of her social security checks for many years so she could pay for his way through film school! I wish he had said her name as well, so I could praise her by name, but since he did not, let me simply praise GRANDMOTHERS!
My grandmothers, Lavinia Lyons, and Mabel Wright, were the kindest, most staunch, interesting women in my childhood (after my MOTHER - Mary Lavinia Wright) and they provided me with a view of a life that has sustained me for all of mine, quiet, orderly, humble and fulfilling lives, lived independently. Especially my grandmother Mabel, who also was a quilter, there was a joy and beauty in her life that I have carried all through mine. When I think of her I think of the sea air of Ocean City where she lived, and the coziness of her little apartment, and how with her sewing skills she made it charming and warm and beautiful!
Mabel Wright used her sewing skills to support herself and her children after she was widowed in her early thirties. Along with her mother, Catherine Sandman Young, the daughter of German immigrants, Mabel sewed uniforms for the Schuylkill Arsenal in Philadelphia. Both women supported themselves through sewing over the toughest decades. Later, after she moved to Ocean City to take care of her mother who had suffered a catastrophic stroke, Mabel worked on the boardwalk, in summer, as a ticket seller, and at Stainton's Department store, in winter. She was a member of the Democratic Women's Club, and a movie club that went to the Village theater, and that brings us full circle back to the movies!
The only Oscar winner I saw was "Bohemian Rhapsody" with my daughter at Mother's Day, and I loved it. I am happy that it won some acclaim and that the struggle from youthful suffering to success that Freddy Mercury lived, is recounted and his triumph is celebrated.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
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